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Gary’s TAC 2012 - The Romantics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 167 09 January 2012 at 3:19pm | IP Logged |
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I've had French-induced sore throats in the past. Now it's the Italian R that's giving me a hard time; my roll just isn't quite strong or fast enough, and it can be hard to fit it in while pronouncing a word or sentence. Should improve with practice at least.
I think I got a pretty good balance between everything last week despite being back at work, hopefully I can keep it up. Italian pronunciation's getting a bit easier, it's mainly the aforementioned R that's a problem at the moment. Apart from that I've not quite got the hang of the intonation but again that should come with (efficient, focused) practice. I had a look at Italiano in Famiglia, a French In Action style video course that's been mentioned on this site a few times. It looks interesting; much like FIA I'm not too interested in the "teaching" parts, as I feel that other courses teach grammar and vocabulary better, but the episodes themselves look like good material for working on listening comprehension and bridging the gap between learning material and native material. Best of all, it appears that transcripts are available! Of course Assimil's still going to be my main study material, but I'm not keen to do any more than one or two lessons per day and so IIF is there if I have the time and desire for more Italian exposure. On the French side of things, I've talked about and recommended the comedy mini-series Bref before. After re-watching some classics and noticing the many hidden references and recurring gags, I checked out some of the many parodies that have now been made. The best one I've seen by far is Vref, je va travailler. Between the hilarious mock-Portuguese accents, the ridiculous script, and the slapstick acting, it made me literally cry with laughter. Hell, I'm trying to avoid cracking up here in the office as I think about it... "Direction les toilettes, pour envoyer un fax!" Edited by garyb on 11 January 2012 at 11:45am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 26 of 167 11 January 2012 at 12:18pm | IP Logged |
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I think I'm fully into the swing of things again now - the usual stress, inadequate sleep and resulting tiredness, and struggle to fit everything in that characterise working life are back in full force. On the positive side though, a big benefit of my new focus on consistency and quality over simply quantity of work is that it helps me relax - instead of getting frustrated that I've only done 10 minutes of work on something in a day, I feel good that I've managed to fit in at least a bit of quality work on it and it's much better than nothing. So under the "a bit of work every day is better than a lot of work every few days" theory, if I have an hour to spare on a given day, which is typical for a weekday, I'll now split it into French, Italian, and music instead of just working on one of them for the whole hour. Which can be hard since especially with music it often takes 20 minutes just to start to get warmed up and into the flow, but it should hopefully be better in the long run, and most weekends I have at least one free day to catch up and have longer sessions.
That's very much how my Italian work is at the moment - ideally I'd like to do an Assimil lesson every day, but even if I can only spend a few minutes revising and shadowing a previous lesson then that's at least something. As enthusiastic as I am about Italian, I have to be realistic and admit that it's not a massive priority in my life, so the slow and steady approach is the best way to attack it even if my existing knowledge and opportunities could potentially help me learn much faster. Social and communication skills really are priority number 1 for me at the moment - what's the point in being able to communicate in a third language if you're a crap communicator in your first two? On the French side of things, I went to a meetup last night. I don't think I was speaking as well as I was at the one last week, and it highlighted what I said before that there's just no substitute for real conversation. Guess I'll just keep up the current plan of conversing when possible, shadowing and self-talk when not. New webcam arrived today; I'm planning on making some vlog-type videos (private of course) to practice speaking, I think that will be more interesting and useful than just talking to myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 27 of 167 18 January 2012 at 12:51pm | IP Logged |
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Been a wee while since the last update. Study wise I guess the best way to put it is that I'm keeping up, but just barely; as usual, fault of lack of time rather than motivation. Just having to accept that I can't do anywhere near as much as I want to, and trying to see the bigger picture - consider all the quotes along the lines of "you may achieve little in a day but a lot in a year".
In the last few weeks I've had several very interesting experiences, conversations, and times spent thinking, which, combined with my recent efforts to socialise as much as possible, have started to change the way I see and feel about social interaction. I seem to be getting better at relaxing, and particularly not getting bothered by small unimportant things, which is in turn making me feel less "blocked" regarding both saying the things I want to say to people and finding things to say to people. It's not been a dramatic change, I'm not yet bursting with confidence and flowing with conversation, but it's been a noticeable one nonetheless. In all the social gatherings I've been at in the last few days, I've felt more desire to express myself and more ease in doing it. There's still no shortage of awkward pauses in my conversations, but they're bothering me less which makes it easier to find things to talk about and not get stuck in my head. I just really hope this sticks and continues to improve with practice. I've had phases like this in the past but it's never stuck so I guess that means I just need to keep it up. I'm still lacking the confidence to speak Italian though. There were a few Italians at the language meetup last night but I just couldn't bring myself to start speaking to them in Italian. I did tell them that I had started learning Italian, in the hope that they might give me some encouragement and opportunity, but I just ran into the all-too-familiar situation of not being taken seriously. I guess people only take you as seriously as the effort you make, and if I'm not trying to talk then it seems like I'm not really making an effort. I'm trying to figure out exactly what it is that's stopping me. It's a combination of not knowing how and where to start, not feeling like I know enough language yet to express many things, and feeling self-conscious about my pronunciation and my ability to make myself understood. None of that was a problem when I started speaking French: I knew enough language to handle general small-talk conversations, I didn't realise how awful my pronunciation was so I didn't worry about it, and the first meetup I went to was a "speed meeting" thing where you talk to one person for a couple of minutes then switch partner - an ideal way to get started which sadly no longer runs. Anyway that's all just excuses, and I need to accept that I just have to start talking and nobody's going to hold my hand and make it easy for me. Ironically, earlier on I had been talking to a beginner in French and saying that she just needs to make the effort to start speaking, not fully appreciating the difficulty of doing so even for someone fairly outgoing and talkative like her! Might be time to read some stuff on Fluent in 3 Months, since speaking from an early stage is Benny's speciality. Next Tuesday if the Italians are there again I'm going to speak to them in Italian, no excuses. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6169 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 28 of 167 19 January 2012 at 10:00am | IP Logged |
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Hey Garyb. I've tried those speed conversation things once. It was certainly a great
experience. It's definitely true that when you're one-on-one with someone the accent thing doesn't show through as much. I agree that having at least a passable accent is absolutely essential unless you are just bursting with confidence and couldn't care less about the laughs. On a social level it is great to hear that you're making progress and it's inspiring. I went to a meet-up yesterday and whilst concentrating on my French at the same time I tried to apply some social principles. I've saved that website you put on your blog last year for future reading, Bonne Chance en 2012 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 167 20 January 2012 at 12:36pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the comment and encouragement Adrean. As I say I just hope the progress continues and it's not just a temporary thing! Language meetups are great as I get to practice my French and meet new people and have a lot of conversations. We have one here which is particularly good, called "Language Café" which is for people learning any language, including people from all over who've recently arrived in the country and want to improve their English, so there's always interesting people who're keen to meet others. As I've said in my log, not all my trips there have gone well, but it's all been a good learning experience.
Regarding my Italian - the FI3M article I was looking for about what to talk about when you don't know much of the language yet. In particular it made me think about learning the vocabulary for talking about the things I usually talk about, as well just what Assimil thinks I should learn. Apart from that I think a lot of my nervousness about Italian just comes from focusing on the negative too much - thinking about all the words I don't know, thinking that my pronunciation could be much better, thinking I'll seem stupid if I'm not understood, worrying that I won't understand. When in fact I should remember the not insignificant number of basic words that I do know, the fact that I've focused on pronunciation from the start and even if my accent's not perfect I should really have no trouble being understood, that if I do have trouble then I'll find out what I need to improve, and that since I have no trouble understanding many of my Italian friends' conversations with each other then understanding one person who knows I'm a beginner should not be a problem. And of course, the more I talk the faster I'll learn, which is great motivation. Edited by garyb on 20 January 2012 at 12:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 30 of 167 23 January 2012 at 12:06pm | IP Logged |
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French wise I had a French meetup last Wednesday, a random drunk conversation in French on Friday, and Skype chat on Saturday. I was pretty happy with all of them and I'm definitely feeling a bit closer to fluency and being able to easily express myself, but still some way to go as ever. One noticeable effect of the shadowing I've been doing is that the speed at which I can speak while still pronouncing accurately has increased a lot. When I know what I want to say, I can say it pretty quickly now.
I had some fun with my webcam at the weekend, in the most innocent way possible of course. Recorded some 2-3 minute videos of me talking about various things. Recording myself definitely gives me more motivation to keep talking and express myself well, even though I know that nobody's watching. I did a few in English to warm up and practice my general speaking, then a couple in French. After that I tried to do one in Italian, which didn't go well but it was a change from just reciting Assimil, and it highlighted my difficulties. The main one is just lack of vocabulary, just simply not knowing the words to say what I want to say, and I found myself slipping into French when this happened. Also my pronunciation was a bit French-influenced. I don't think this is really language confusion; I had been working on French beforehand so was still very much in "French mode", and since I'm not very used to Italian yet it's hard to go straight into "Italian mode". A big gap in my Italian vocabulary at the moment, aside from the obvious everyday nouns and verbs, is relative pronouns - I'm still yet to figure out the Italian equivalents of all the French constructions with que, qui, dont, ce que, auquel, etc.. On the positive side though, as with French I found that when I did know what to say I could say it quite quickly and accurately. Anyway I'll hopefully see how I get on in an actual conversation tomorrow! I was thinking about the "French mode" thing, and realising how much better I tend to speak on the Wednesday all-French meetups than on the English-heavy Tuesday meetups. Being surrounded by the language definitely makes it come more easily. I've also found that one of the quickest ways to get into "French mode" is to watch an episode or two of my favourite, Bref. If I watch it before going to a meetup, I end up thinking about all the lines and jokes on the way and I'm nicely warmed up and thinking in French by the time I arrive. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 31 of 167 25 January 2012 at 11:47am | IP Logged |
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Interesting Tuesday night language meetup as always. As has been typical recently, the French group was mostly beginners and there were about ten English sentences spoken for every French one, so it wasn't very useful to me. I did get to speak a bit more French later on in one-to-one conversations.
As promised, I did make some effort to speak Italian. As always I didn't really know how to start so I just threw in a few sentences in an otherwise English conversation with two Italian speakers. They understood just fine, but responded in English so I didn't get a chance to try a proper conversation. My pronunciation was nowhere near as good as it is when I practice with Assimil; this is a problem I've had in the past with French and I should be able to overcome it with a combination of more practice and making a very conscious effort to sound more Italian when I do speak to people. Overall though I still feel that it's my lack of knowledge of the language that's holding me back more than my lack of confidence speaking it, although on the latter point one of them encouraged me I need to think about it less and just let the words come - a good point since I definitely spent a lot more time thinking about speaking Italian, worrying about speaking Italian, and talking about speaking Italian than actually speaking Italian. I also found them a lot harder to understand than my Italian friends. Either the people from the Bologna area are particularly clear speakers compared to most Italians, or they're just what I'm used to hearing. Once the people at the meetup realised that I understood some Italian, one of them launched into a fairly detailed rant about recent sea-fishing legislation in Italy, which I'm not even going to pretend I understood. So I still think that speaking at a stage this early is beneficial, although perhaps not as much for increasing your knowledge as for simply getting used to speaking the language to real people. And of course it keeps up the motivation: I'm not enjoying again being the beginner who can barely express himself, and I'm keen to get past that stage as soon as I can. Not that finding motivation is ever really a problem for me of course. If nothing else I think I did manage to convince the Italians that I wasn't joking and was actually serious about wanting to learn their language, so they might be a bit more helpful in future, especially as my ability improves. We shall see though. Getting native speakers to take you seriously and help you is always going to be one of the hardest parts of language learning. In the next week I'll try and get a bit more "spontaneous" speaking practice, even if it's just with myself, and try to learn some vocabulary that will be useful for these conversations - sorry Assimil, as much as I love you, your guided tours by bus to archaeological dig sites aren't much use to me right now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 32 of 167 27 January 2012 at 1:21pm | IP Logged |
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In the last few days I've been doing what might be called more "traditional" study for Italian - grammar, reading, and writing. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather stay focused on speaking and listening, but these are slightly harder to practice during lunch hour and other spare moments in the office :). It's better than nothing, and good for more focused learning about a particular grammar point or vocabulary related to a particular topic. I've written a few paragraphs on things that come up frequently in conversations like music, work, and interests; read some forum posts; and studied the relative pronouns (chi, che, dal/al/il quale, di cui, a cui, etc., a lot of which are pleasantly similar to either their French or English equivalents). Reading and writing are still of course requiring much dictionary use, and the indefinite relative pronouns are still a bit unclear (are ciò che, quel che, quello che, and che cosa really completely interchangeable equivalents to our "what"?), but as with French, all these things should become a lot easier and clearer after plenty exposure. As much as I seem to like to talk about all the things I did wrong in my French learning, one thing I certainly did right was getting tons of exposure to native materials to reinforce common language and give me a good idea of what "sounds right".
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